


Guard Dog

by semele



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:45:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6839566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Here,” he says, and stares her down as he puts the black puppy on the floor at her feet. “You take him, or I will. Your choice.”</p><p>(Set in an alternative universe in which s3 never happens, because after Mt Weather the Delinquents pack their bags and start a separate village.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guard Dog

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shortitude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/gifts).



Bellamy has no excuse.

Okay, not true. Bellamy has heaps of excuses, and he revises them in his head all the way back to Aventine, but the moment he steps into Raven’s workshop, he cuts the crap. He knows better than to try and bullshit her.

“Here,” he says, and stares her down as he puts the black puppy on the floor at her feet. “You take him, or I will. Your choice.”

She gives him a look like he just grew a second head, and his only defence is to shrug. He’s not going to save face here anyway.

“The Grounders we were trading with said they had more puppies than they could feed. So I took pity. He’ll be a good guard dog.” He gives the dog a dubious look. “Or so they said.”

Even Bellamy despite his inexperience could tell that this was the weakest one from the litter, and he might not make it through the winter. Did he still pay the Grounders a few good rabbit pelts? Yes he did. Does he judge himself already? Yes he does.

Or maybe not. Because Raven slowly lowers herself on a stool, then leans towards the puppy with her hand extended, as if waiting for his permission to pet him. She’s rewarded with a pathetic little squeal, and then suddenly he’s in her lap, her face buried in his soft fur as he squirms to cuddle up closer.

Bellamy doesn’t think they notice when he leaves.

***

Bellamy has long made his peace with the fact that he’s at least a bit ridiculous, what with his speeches and doubts and occasional Hamlet spiel. It’s fine. He can be ridiculous. It’s better than many other things he’s been after landing on the ground.

So he doesn’t try to protect his ego. This is his skin now, and he wears it comfortably. He’s the guy who carries other people’s kids around when they leave Aventine to hunt. He pays a small fortune for a sickly puppy just because he looked at him with sad eyes. He talks Miller into naming his goat Amalthea because it sounded funny at the time, and they weren’t even drunk.

So he really shouldn’t be surprised when he comes to check up on Raven the next day, and feels like there is something suspicious in the air.

“How is he?” he asks, gesturing at the puppy. Currently curled up on a pillow stuffed into a big metal bowl at Raven’s feet.

“Sleeping off your trek. Poor guy was exhausted.” Then she looks up suddenly, and gives him an impish grin, a rare treat even after a year in Aventine. “I’m naming him Hephaestus in your honor. Because you’re a nerd.”

For some reason her words give Bellamy the strangest sense of warmth.

***

Hephaestus the puppy doesn’t really like Amalthea the goat, which probably makes some sort of poetic sense. Except it’s almost winter, and so no one in Aventine really has time for anything poetic.

It’s their second winter on the ground, and they’re prepared so much better than last year, but it’s still scary, still worrisome and haunting. They’ll make it, of course they will. At least most of them. All of them, fuck it. This year, they’ll all make it.

The last few months have been a quick lesson in housekeeping; in planting, and preserving, in hunting and skinning, in caring and building. They’re a proper village now, with a storage house and a communal bath house, a meeting hall and a pen for goats and donkeys. Next year, there might be horses. For now, they don’t have enough food to keep horses, at least that’s what Bellamy thinks. It’s not like he has an actual idea how much food you have to store to keep a horse fed for four months.

Well, for now he has other things to think about, other than nonexistent horses. Aventine is sixty three people. He intends to keep it that way.

There is a lot of running around in the process, building a wooden shed for the goats in record time and repairing the village wall relentlessly, hurry, hurry, before the ground freezes. To Bellamy’s surprise, little Heffy takes to following him around the village whenever Raven locks him out of her workshop, busy with something dangerous, welding or messing with electrical circuits. He’s recently grown too big for his metal bowl with a pillow, but he still runs in this funny way puppies have, as if slightly confused by the length of his own paws. Maybe it’s even good for him to run in the woods while Bellamy chops wood, and to bark at squirrels as if they were his greatest enemy. 

Who knows? Maybe it’s even good for Bellamy.

So after the snow falls, it seems kind of natural for him to gravitate towards Raven and Sinclair’s workshop during the day. It’s where Heffy is. Bellamy wants to keep an eye on Heffy.

Right. Because it’s not like Heffy ignores him completely when Raven is around.

“Ugh, come here, you big log,” she mutters to him at least four times a day, pretending to be very annoyed by his attentions, especially him trying to climb onto her lap as she works. “Here, now. Better?” she asks, fingers buried in the fur behind his ears. “Good boy. Some fucking guard dog you are, you sap. You’d lick an intruder to death.”

It makes Bellamy smile from over the pile of clothes he’s laboriously mending in the corner of the workshop, because yes, right. She’s so right. Heffy is ridiculous. That’s the only reason why he’s smiling.

***

By spring time, Heffy grows into a forty-pound pile of fur, affection, and saliva, his initial weakness all but forgotten. Clearly, he just needed a little love. And a shitton of food.

No one in Aventine really says a word about how Heffy pretty much has his own ration, because, ostensibly, he’s a guard dog. An investment. Next year, he’ll help stand watch. We’ll start taking him on hunting trips. He’ll help keeping the predators away. Here in Aventine, we’re very practical about things, and it’s not like any of us is childishly excited to have a furry beast the size of a small bear running around, barking happily, and occasionally munching on Miller’s shoes.

(Why Miller’s shoes? No one knows. And no one apart from Miller really cares.)

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but Bellamy thinks Raven is stronger this spring, more at peace and surer on her feet. She spoiled Heffy rotten during the winter, and maybe he spoiled her a little in return; taught her to expect warmth, and broke her routine just enough that now she steps outside a little more bravely, leans on her brace a little more surely. 

It’s just Heffy’s influence. Of course it is.

The spring feels, somehow, tentative, it feels slow and a little shy, but Bellamy welcomes its strangeness with a heart lighter than it should be, and when he shows up at Raven’s workshop in the evenings to take Heffy for a run to the stream and back, there is energy to his step he thinks wasn’t there before. 

The first time Raven kisses him, Bellamy is sweaty and gross from having carried two buckets of water in merciless May sun, but she doesn’t seem to care. She climbs on her toes, and grips him by the hair, and moans quietly against his mouth until he pulls her close against him, and kisses her like he means it.

Of course that’s when Heffy gives him a low, warning growl, _too close, buddy_ , and they jump apart with a heady laugh, some guard dog you have here, don’t you dare complaining, Blake, you’re the one who brought him in.

It’s entirely possible that they lock Heffy out of Raven’s hut after dusk, and he spends the next hour howling outside as if someone was in grave danger. Oh well. In the morning, Bellamy is just boneless and happy enough to pretend that he has no idea why everyone in the village is staring daggers at him.

***

This year, they both brave the annual fair after harvest, their cart filled to the brim with small lamps and fur leggings for trade. Heffy is trodding happily right next to Tiberius the donkey, and Bellamy has a nagging feeling that he’s keeping a watchful eye on Raven, just in case.

Does Heffy end up biting the first person to raise their voice at Raven during haggling? Yes he does. He very much does.

The guy spits out something that’s probably highly offensive, and in return, Raven lets out an impressive flow of rapid Spanish that would probably surprise Bellamy if it wasn’t for the fact that he spent the whole winter listening to her and Sinclair insulting every single tool under their roof. As it is, he can actually pick up a few familiar expressions. The Grounder clearly understands a lot more, but since his shin is still bleeding, he doesn’t seem too eager to continue the conversation.

If Bellamy ends up slipping Heffy an extra slice of meat in the evening, well. No one can see him, so it’s okay. Whatever. Raven spoiled this damned dog so much over the winter that it doesn’t matter anyway.

Yup. Raven is a first class sap, and it was totally her who spoiled him.


End file.
